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Emotion

Skateboarders in Santa Ana, Calif.Credit
Andrew Cullen for The New York Times

SUNDAY PUZZLE — Today’s crossword by Tom McCoy is the type of puzzle that makes me rock out. I don’t know about you, but as soon as I got the theme and realized why the title was “Emotion,” the first song that came to mind was this one:

From the opening 1A clue (“Full of sound and fury”), which evokes one of my favorite soliloquies from The Scottish Play for ALL TALK, Mr. McCoy’s puzzle was fun and engaging. And I will absolutely not be having any nightmares at all after realizing that 115D’s IBM is also 49D’s HAL (from “2001: A Space Odyssey”) if you shift each letter one place later in the alphabet.

Today’s Theme

The first thing I do when I sit down to the solve the Sunday puzzle is note the byline and the title. Some people refuse to look at the title on the assumption it will make solving too easy, and that’s their right. Me, I don’t need life to be harder; I’ll take the help, even if it just makes me appreciate the puzzle more.

Mr. McCoy’s puzzle is called “Emotion,” and I think that’s brilliant, because that’s exactly what happens in today’s theme: the letter E moves to a different place in a common phrase, making a new phrase that can be clued in a punny way.

There are eight such phrases today, and most of them work well for me. I’ve never heard the phrase BALANCED EDIT (for “Balanced diet”), and I’ve been on both sides of the editorial process for years, but I suppose it could be a thing. A TEAL OF TWO CITIES seems a bit stretchy to me, but I liked MALES ON WHEELS (metaphorically speaking) and MATE MARKET, the best of the set. Here’s the entire theme, along with the phrases on which they are based:

23A: TRICKS OF THE TREAD, for “Tricks of the trade”

33A: BALANCED EDIT, for “Balanced diet”

48A: MINUET HAND, for “Minute hand”

63A: GREAT SALT LEAK, for “Great Salt Lake”

70A: MALES ON WHEELS, for “Meals on Wheels”

84A: MATE MARKET, for “Meat market”

99A: THE CHOSEN EON, for “The Chosen One”

112A: A TEAL OF TWO CITIES, for “A Tale of Two Cities”

Tricky Clues

■ 20A: Very good use of a space in a clue. “Minecraft” (without the space) is an online game that is insanely popular among middle school- and high school-aged kids (yes, you can be older and still like the game. I am not saying that you can’t, but that seems to be the general demographic). The clue “Mine craft” (with the space) refers to a craft you would find in a mine, and that would be a COAL CAR.

■ 79A: You’ve seen this before, unless this is your very first crossword puzzle. “First in command?” is telling you to look for the first letter in the word “command.” And that would be the letter C, or CEE.

■ 122A: This puzzle was made and edited before certain news broke about ARMRESTs on airplanes, but we’ve all rubbed elbows on some sort of ARMREST. It happens.

■ 5D: My favorite “ACKer” in comics is Bill the Cat of Bloom County fame. You can currently read Berke Breathed’s genius on Facebook, where he publishes his strips.

■ 6D: This one confused me. If you “Get in the loop?”, aren’t you the one being LASSOed? To LASSO implies that you are throwing the loop.

■ 14D: Trick question! The clue “Mens ___” looks, on the surface, like it might be asking for something that belongs to men. But there’s no possessive apostrophe, as in “Men’s.” So it has to be something else. Today, it’s a Latin phrase, Mens REA, or the intention or knowledge of wrongdoing that constitutes part of a crime.

■ 17D: I know. This is a tricky one. But the clue/entry pairing is more fair than you think. If you apply the common code “A=1, B=2 ...” to the numbers in the clue, it spells out “Like this clue,” and the answer is IN CODE. You’re welcome.

■ 46D: I never knew that PALMOLIVE got its name from the OILS it is made from, palm oil and olive oil. #NowIKnow

■ 52D: Remember the A.L.S. ICE BUCKET challenge?

■ 115D: From the Department of Conspiracy Theories: As I said above, this is going to keep me up tonight. If you start with HAL and shift each letter one place later in the alphabet, you wind up with I.B.M.

Constructor’s Notes

This puzzle started with the title, with the specific theme developing from the word EMOTION. It’s more common for me to think of a theme and then later to find a title fitting the theme, but the other direction definitely happens, too.

It also contains one of my favorite pieces of wordplay trivia in the clue for 115-Down — thanks to my Dad for teaching me that!